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Wednesday, December 23, 2015

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, an author gave to me...

All is Merri and Bright by Tifani Clark

Merri Wilcox has finally achieved her greatest dream and opened her own hair salon. Life is bliss until Brighton Stansbury walks through her door. Growing up, Brighton was behind every bad thing that happened to Merri. She hasn't seen him since high school graduation and could have happily continued like that forever.

When a winter storm traps Merri and Brighton together, will the pair finally learn to get along, or will the Christmas holiday become their new war zone?

Tifani Clark grew up on a potato farm in southeastern Idaho with two brothers and two sisters. Because of her location, she had a lot of space to imagine and daydream and often pretended to be characters in books--like Scarlett O'Hara. She is married to the love of her life and is the mother of four fabulous children. When not writing, she enjoys playing the violin and piano and traveling to new places.

Q and A with the Author:

1.Do you recall how your interest
in writing originated?

a.
I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I could remember. As a child,
I read all the time. I
wanted to create stories like my favorite authors. It took me a while to find a
time in my life where I could fit
writing in, and I’m glad I’m there now.

2.Give us some insight into how
your writing day/time is structured.

a.
I’m not sure if structured would be a word to describe my writing.
Pretty much, if my kids are at school
and there aren’t other pressing matters to attend to, I’m writing like a mad woman. Often, my husband has to work
weekends. I get a lot of writing time in then,
too.

Connect with the Author here:

Snippet

1Merri
gasped when she saw who walked through the door of her hair salon four days
before Christmas. Her hands clenched into fists and she barely stopped herself
from chopping off a lock of Mrs. Baker’s hair in her surprise—or maybe it was
dismay. Lacking any better ideas, she instantly dropped to the floor.

“Merri,
are you okay?” Paige, another stylist, called from across the room.

“I’m
fine. I just dropped a contact.” Merri cringed as she knelt in the wispy gray
hairs scattered across the floor. Bad day
to wear black pants.

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Luccia Gray was born in London, and now lives in the south of Spain with her husband. She has three children and three grandchildren. When she's not reading or writing, she teaches English at an Adult Education Centre and at University.

Following Edward Rochester’s death, Jane Eyre, who has been blackmailed into marrying a man she despises, will have to cope with the return of the man she loved and lost. The secrets she has tried so hard to conceal must be disclosed, giving rise to unexpected events and more shocking revelations.Romance, mystery, and excitement will unfold exploring the evolution of the original characters, and bringing to life new and intriguing ones, spinning a unique and absorbing narrative, which will move the action from the Yorkshire countryside, to Victorian London, and across the Atlantic Ocean to Colonial Jamaica.

“Will you
be responsible for Mr. Mason’s permanence in this house as one of the undead?”
I roared impatiently.

“What is it
you want?”

“To see the
corpse and absorb his sins, of course.”

Mystery:

John
stopped before a small casket which looked out of place inside a large niche
positioned on the lower level, at the end wall of the vault, below Edward’s,
and read, “Infant Eyre Rochester. May 1855.”

He smiled
at me, “Do not faint now, mother. You are going to see your baby again, at
last.”

Adventure:

Hours
later, we were woken by a wild raging storm, which tossed our ship mercilessly
like a seashell on the shore. My whole body was shaken and turned inside out.
It seemed my entrails desired to escape the storm by tearing out of my body. I
looked out of the tiny port hole and saw a huge mass of water and dark objects
spinning like a whirlpool, and I was thrust back against my desk.

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Monday, December 21, 2015

While working at a wood camp in the Logan canyon during the winter of 1880, Caroline Simpson is forced to thwart the aggressive advances of Mr. Butch Larson, and in the process discovers that her long-time friend James has genuine affection for her. But as stubborn as Caroline is, she minimizes the emotions James has awakened in her, and it takes almost losing him to admit her true feelings.

AN UNEXPECTED PROPOSAL was introduced in the first volume of the bestselling and award-winning Timeless Romance Anthology series, WINTER COLLECTION:

**Amazon #1 Bestselling *New Release* in Clean Romance

**Amazon Top 10 in Regency Romance

**Amazon Top 5 in Victorian Romance

Annette Lyon is the Whitney Award-winner author of Band of Sisters and a three-time recipient of Utah’s Best of State Medal for fiction, twice for novels and a third time for her novellas. She has received many publication awards from the League of Utah Writers, including the Silver Quill for her first book in the Newport Ladies Book Club series, Paige. She’s published more than a dozen novels, even more novellas, several nonfiction books, and over 120 magazine articles, and she has a cum laude BA in English from BYU. When she’s not writing, knitting, or eating chocolate, she can be found mothering and avoiding the spots on the kitchen floor.

Q and A with the Author:

Do you recall how your interest in writing
originated?

The credit goes to two people: Beverly Cleary (my first attempts at
writing were about rodents not unlike Ralph S. Mouse), and my older sister Mel,
who was in sixth grade and oh-so-cool. She started writing stories, so of
course, writing had to be cool, and I started to. I was about eight years old
and have known ever since then that I wanted to be a writer. (All of these
years later, my older sister is also a writer; she’s about to finish her MFA in
creative nonfiction.)

Give us an insight into how your writing day/time
is structured?

When my children were very young, I wrote in snatches of time—fifteen
minutes here, half an hour during nap time, and so on. I got very good at
thinking ahead to what I’d write when the opportunity presented itself, and
then when I found myself in the dance studio lobby for 45 minutes during my
daughter’s class, I’d whip out 1500 words as fast as I could. They’re older now,
so my schedule is more flexible, but somehow, finding time is still hard. One
thing has always stayed the same, however: I cannot write well in the early
morning; my brain just refuses to work then. I’m most creative and able to
focus after noon and sometimes late in the evening when the house is
quiet.

Connect with the Author here:

Snippet

And there it was. She’d dreamed of her first proposal—the first of many,
she’d hoped—but the young man asking for her hand wasn’t supposed to be James.
How could she reject his offer and expect him to be her friend after?

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Saturday, December 19, 2015

Claudette Melanson writes & edits in Guelph, Ontario, with her husband Ron and four bun babies: Tegan, Pepper, Butters & Beckett. She graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a BA in English and an MA in Literature. She's wished to be a Vampire since age five. She hopes to one day work full time as an author, since there are many, many books living inside her head.

In her spare time she enjoys watching Japanese Anime and reading vampire stories....along with other great fiction. She is also very interested in good health and is an advocate of Ketogenic eating, using whole and natural foods. Her favorite foods are bulletproof coffee, cashew flour crust pizza and treats made with xylitol and almond, coconut or cashew flours.

Future dreams include writing many more books and spending more time with her son Jacob. Her biggest dream is to make Universal Halloween Horror Nights a yearly event with hubby and son. A Rabbit Rescue fanatic, she also hopes to help rescues all over the world save many innocent lives.

After being left in the dark for all of her life, Maura’s father, Maxwell, has finally returned to reveal sinister family secrets Maura could never have dreamed possible—including his revelation that she is one of The Born. But his daughter soon discovers both he and her mother are keeping pieces of her reality hidden, still. As Maura struggles to unravel the mysteries surrounding her new existence and discover every piece of the cryptic puzzle, life appears intent on casting stumbling blocks across her path with every step forward.

Tragedy seems to stalk Maura, and those around her, as she stumbles along, altering the young changeling’s family, just when they have all come back together. The changes left in its wake could be for the better, or may threaten their existence, entirely.

With the arrival of Christmas comes the opportunity for Maura to draw close to everyone she loves—and finally reunite with Ron, the man she loves. But permanence has always eluded her, and in her current state of flux this pattern endures, as fate seems intent on snapping the threads that bind her to those she holds most dear. Maxwell’s good intentions pave a road for Maura, littered with misery, while her mother, Caelyn’s, desire to shield her family from pain may tear her away from them, altogether. The perfect happiness in the young vampire’s grasp is so easily swept away and dragged under, out of reach. Can Maura erupt from the darkness and confusion to break the surface and find the life she’s always dreamed of?

In the midst of chaos, assistance materializes in the form of another of her kind—ephemerally beautiful, yet explosively volatile, this new vampire may prove capable of unlocking the puzzle-box Maxwell seems intent on securing from her sight. Maura will discover the darkest parts of herself in her quest to understand the being she is destined to become. Her newfound friend has some shady intentions of his own—such as thwarting the love that has grown between Maura and Ron. Following in the wake of the impulsive vampire’s misguided instruction may further pull a naive Maura down into the depths of ultimate despair, heartbreak…and even destruction.

My
hand came to rest on Ron’s chest as I tried to steady myself and his
heartbeat pulsed against my palm—electrifying, as if a wire had
connected the two—and I realized the beating inside my head mirrored the
same inside his chest. His heartbeat resonated in my ears, silencing
the rest of the world. Ron’s mouth moved, speaking words, but his heart
drowned those out, too.

“Shhhhhh…”
I bent to kiss him and devour any words of protest. There was a pulse
in his full, perfect lower lip that kept time against my own. He lay
very still now, so I pushed myself up enough to look in his face. It
was red…everything my sight beheld was tinged scarlet, so I shut my eyes
against it. I could hear a small tearing sound, as if there was a
microscopic person inside my head ripping paper—crek…crek…crek. My
canines ached like they were being ripped from their sockets. If I
could just sink them into his flesh, it would take away all the pain…

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About Me

Hi! I'm a preschool teacher who also manages and owns a small production company for voice acting and our various productions, called The Manga Project. I am also an avid reader, and a writer of fiction, fan fiction, fantasy, some sci-fi, poetry, and general non-sense.
I like to cook and bake a lot, though I usually don't have a lot of time, between producing/directing, teaching, and writing.
I just put out my first publication, The Unknown Elf, and am crossing fingers that it does well.